The case for federalism in Italy and the EU

Two articles a week apart by Francesco Alberoni on the Sunday issue of the Corriere Della Sera seem to agree with this blogger. Like I do, Alberoni also believes that it would have been better to unify the Country around a federal system from day one.

Both of us agree that for the EU to succeed, it too must also go federal, preferably with each Member State adopting a federal system of government domestically to better sync with the federal government.

Italy has a tried and tested self-governing political unit similar to US counties that functions successfully in the islands and bilingual areas of the Country, notably the South Tyrol and the Trentino. There, both provinces (Bolzano and Trento) are equally self-governing. It should be a simple matter for the Italians that invented the “autonomous provinces” to replicate such political units throughout the Country.

The EU, by contrast, to go federal would need to rethink its overall structure. To allow for representation of each Member State’s electorate in any future EU Federal Parliament, a few important missing ingredients would need be developed or rethought: the same political parties would need to be created in each and every Member State; such EU-wide parties should be limited in number (two or three) with a House and Senate respectively representing the citizens and the Member States similarly to what is done in the USA; electoral districts and voting should be determined by each Member State, perhaps within the confines of guidelines established at the federal level by means of the equivalent of an EU Directive; such a Parliament would sit in Strasbourg or Brussels and act as a federal legislative body enacting the Resolutions that even now are directly binding on the citizens of each and every Member State, which in its present form, however, do not represent the will of the citizens of each and every Member State but that of their respective, national or “state” Governments.